Virginia Grise

(Playwright) An award-winning theatre artist, Virginia Grise is a writer, performer and director. From panzas to prisons, from street theatre to large-scale multimedia performances, from princess to chafa, Virginia writes plays that are set in bars without windows, barrio rooftops, and lesbian bedrooms. Her work has been produced, commissioned and developed at the Alliance Theatre, Bihl Haus Arts, Company of Angels, Cornerstone Theatre, Highways Performance Space, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwright’s Center, Pregones Theatre, REDCAT, Victory Gardens and Yale Repertory Theatre. Her play blu was a recipient of the Yale Drama Series Award and was recently published by Yale University Press. Her other published work includes The Panza Monologues (University of Texas Press) and an edited volume of Zapatista communiqués titled Conversations with Don Durito (Autonomedia Press). She is a recipient of the Princess Grace Award in Theatre Directing, the Jerome Fellowship from The Playwrights’ Center and was a finalist for the Kennedy Center’s Latina/o Playwriting Award, Alliance Theatre’s Kendeda Award, and the LARK Play Development Center’s Playwrights of New York (PONY) Award. She has performed both nationally and internationally at venues including the Jose Marti Catedra in Havana, Cuba and the University of Butare in Rwanda, Africa. As an activist she has facilitated organizing efforts among women, immigrant, Chicano, working class and queer youth. Virginia has taught writing for performance at the university level, as a public school teacher, in community centers and in the juvenile correction system. She holds an MFA in Writing for Performance from the California Institute of the Arts.